Simon Abrams

The artful parallels that director Chan Tze Woon draws between contemporary and now middle-aged pro-democratic Hong Kong protesters often seem insubstantial given the movie’s thinly drawn narrative of historic events.

Unfortunately, the movie’s unexpected plot twist violently re-directs its treacly uplift narrative for the sake of a Hail Mary conclusion that’s almost ridiculous enough to be campy fun. It’s not though, since the twist in question feels like a last-ditch effort to convince viewers that the movie’s otherwise plain story, credited to Vera Herbert (series writer on “This Is Us”), has more depth than it does.

Hadžihalilović's latest is both too hazy to make a great adaptation and too focused to be genuinely dream-like.

For better and worse, Gone in the Night feels like the directorial debut of a podcaster, somebody who knows the value of storytelling novelty and has a gift for narrative economy, but also suggests more by the grace of good casting than their own singular talents.

Unfortunately, The Deer King fatally (and repeatedly) stalls as its plot starts winding down and its creators lunge for a character-driven moral to a symbolically freighted parable.

Each gun- or fist-fight features a few cool individual images, but these standalone elements never exceed the Russos’ blurry presentation. That’s especially deadly in an action movie that’s constantly trying to give viewers the impression of speed and scope.

A lot of substantial or just different material might have enriched this documentary’s tidy fall-and-rise story.

Rubikon never offers viewers deep answers to its bigger questions, but it does pose enough questions to keep things moving while you watch.

While Sniper: The White Raven sometimes delivers solid meat-and-potatoes action movie violence, the rest of the film only confirms the hellish nature of war, which we’ve all seen before.

I’m not sure where this particular wannabe franchise is going or if anybody but initiated viewers will care to find out, but I could watch another one.

Derrickson and Cargill successfully tailor their focused and mostly compelling narrative to a Steven Spielberg/Amblin Entertainment–esque bit of Stephen King–sploitation.

Poser might have been more satisfying if its gauzy night-club aesthetic and bold, underlined dialogue didn’t smother viewers with trite observations about hipster artistes.

Imagine, if you will, a dystopian nightmare set in a post-industrialized world that’s forever teetering on its last legs, but never quite falls over. This description does not, admittedly, tell you much, but the movie’s less of a narrative-driven parable than a dazzling and corrosively cynical vision of a hyper-compartmentalized society that’s struggling to both die and reset.

The scattershot new media satire Vengeance might have been merely a toothless provocation replete with both-sides false equivalences were it not so well-scripted and well-directed on a scene-to-scene basis.

Dashcam succeeds as a barrage of icky stimuli that may go great with a rowdy audience.

Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko succeeds where so many other movies like it fail simply by making its characters seem real enough to be going through a series of familiar growing pains.

RRR feels simultaneously personal and gargantuan in scope.

Carpignano’s impressionistic plot and pseudo-naturalistic style also tends to boil down human emotions so as to only suggest rather than reveal complexity. The limiting style and characterizations in A Chiara are only so thoughtful.

Christina Ricci does most, if not all, of the emotional lifting in the lightweight horror drama Monstrous, a period piece about a single mom and her son who, in 1955, run away from home and re-settle in an isolated lakeside house.

The Taiwanese horror movie The Sadness is both conceptually exhausting and viscerally upsetting—an ideal summer movie for the third year of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The movie’s half-hearted jokes, on frustrated women artists and their blind male collaborators, tend to be one-note and thankfully besides the point. But if you adjust your expectations, you’re more likely to accept Lux Aeterna as a vigorously realized doodle.

I often wished there was more to Hatching than just a few weak digs at bad mothers who are a little too online. Maybe you have to be Finnish to see Hatching as a blistering and culturally specific satire. Or maybe there’s just not much to get about the movie.

The awkward transitions and clichéd merrymaking that define Lisa’s story will likewise be either more feature than bug for genre fans or just one more thing that makes Azuelos and Fierro’s narrative seem lazy and confused.

This sleepy and visually murky black-and-white drama belabors the same banal truisms about memory and role-playing during wartime –basically, it’s impossible to maintain your autonomy when you’re only a pawn in a complicated game — and tends to be more interesting to think about than to watch.

The Cellar doesn't even need to be a smarter or even more faithful homage. All it needs to be is a little more of something—energetic, gross, thoughtful ... something!—to make it compelling enough to withstand comparisons to its many generic precedents.

Pathological behavior seems to be the main subject of the bitter Ukrainian satire Donbass, an unpleasant, but as-advertised slice of life drama set in the title region, an embattled territory in Eastern Ukraine.

The film may be cinematic comfort food, but its creators do earn our trust and nail all the essential beats they need to along the way.

The dual nature of “Babi Yar. Context” as both an essay movie and a cut-up historic document might create an uneasy tension with viewers who would like to know more about whatever they’re looking at. If nothing else, Loznitsa succeeds at being upsetting.

There’s more atmosphere than plot in the Romanian drama Intregalde, a moody parable that sometimes feels like the Eastern European arthouse response to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Like the anime series, Jujutsu Kaisen 0 sometimes feels too much like a Cliffs Notes adaptation, despite also featuring more interaction between the supporting characters and the lead protagonist than the original manga.

Co-writer/co-director duo Harpo and Lenny Guit’s apparent disregard for their viewers’ comfort can sometimes be quite funny, depending on your tolerance for messy, meandering absurdist comedy.

Against the Ice delivers all the delirious period drama thrills and survival horror angst that you could want from a movie with that title.

The Burning Sea may ultimately be too uptight for its own good, but there’s enough here to satisfy disaster aficionados who’ve already been here before and only really want to root for more of the same.

Fistful of Vengeance is a movie in duration only; it’s pretty slapdash in terms of its execution, even during its glossy-looking action set pieces.

The camera loves Channing Tatum, and that makes up for a lot in Dog, a corny road movie that mostly panders to fans of Tatum and/or dogs, as well as any moviegoer who still thinks that making a big show of supporting the troops (any troops) makes them more human than, uh, most everyone else.

Sometimes, the suggestive nature of Gregg’s impressionistic mood piece—as well as a characteristically strong lead performance by Riseborough (Possessor, Mandy)—is enough to sustain one’s interest in Here Before. Right up until Gregg lobs an unsettling and only partly satisfying twist at viewers and leaves us to work through our feelings on our own time.

As we tag along with Haroun’s characters, we learn to appreciate their story as a small, but vivid study of lives that are so much more than their progressive developments.

Fans of cheap thrills and cheesy B-movies are sure to be frustrated by The Requin, a new shark pic that waits about an hour before introducing major carnivorous fish action. That alone might turn off viewers since The Requin only lasts about 89 minutes, and most of the movie plays out like a soapy two-hander about survivor’s guilt.

A strong ensemble cast, led by Sterling K. Brown and Regina Hall, does a lot of emotional heavy lifting in the otherwise lightweight mockumentary Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.

The British WWII drama “Munich - The Edge of War” starts off as a prim spy thriller and ends as an insufferable civics lesson.

The new New York Ninja often feels like a pre-fab midnight movie that was made with apparent love and care but without much urgency or creativity.

Unlike a lot of recent indie horror movies, An Unquiet Grave doesn’t feel bogged down by the last few decades’ worth of American horror. It’s a spare, dread-filled mood piece whose just-so dialogue, too-tight close-ups, and deceptively subdued pacing all tease out small, but essential details from both of these elusive central characters.

While many of the jokes in Hotel Transylvania: Transformania probably won’t linger in your mind, they are still fairly well-executed.

King Car may leave viewers wondering about a number of basic questions (mostly related to the plot), but it also often feels open and precise enough to work on its own terms.

There may be nothing new about America Underdog, but it’s still good enough, as far as non-perishable comfort food goes.

There are a lot of ideas swimming around in “The Pit,” but most of them aren’t arranged well enough to demand your attention.

In theory, that sort of self-victimization could be funny; in this reality, not so much.

With his rich coming-of-age drama The Hand of God, Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino not only courts, but squashes comparisons to formative maestro Federico Fellini.

Watching Smith's buddies pay him heartfelt tribute is one thing, but that doesn’t make spending so much time (115 minutes???) with his fawning co-conspirators feel much less oppressive.

Vonnegut’s family members and biographers provide the most intriguing material in Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time, but their interviews are too brief to enhance viewers’ appreciation of his work.

I wanted to root for and care about the world of “Night Raiders,” but I never felt like Niska and her daughter said more about themselves than their predictable behavior advertised.

It takes some chutzpah to name your siege thriller Dangerous, and unfortunately, there’s not enough of it in the Scott Eastwood actioner of that name.

The first and maybe biggest problem facing viewers when they watch The Spine of Night is its drab and dramatically inert animation style.

The wispy depression drama A Mouthful of Air floats more weighty ideas about mental illness and suicidal ideation than its episodic narrative can accommodate.

Army of Thieves, a by-the-numbers heist movie and prequel to Zack Snyder’s gloomy zombie caper “Army of the Dead,” traces over that previous movie without ever improving or even just replicating its lighter elements, especially its chases and safecracking shenanigans.

We meander from one story to the next until every idea, big and small, gets cast aside with childish zeal.

Labyrinth of Cinema is tremendously affecting, frequently beguiling, usually exhausting, and on, and on, and on.

Maybe this is a product of the movie’s nature as an adaptation, but there’s never really a moment in There’s Someone Inside Your House that suggests its protagonists are real enough to be worth rooting for.

Character actor Tom Skerritt takes the lead for once in this gentle, melancholic drama about an older man who, while overwhelmed by suicidal thoughts, figures some things out for himself. Fans of David Guterson’s source novel will probably get it, but everyone else might need a moment to get the picture.

There’s a great—or maybe just better—drama somewhere in the pre-WWII Japanese period drama Wife of a Spy, a low-simmering psychological thriller about Satoko Fukahara (Yu Aoi) and her mysterious husband Yusaku (Issey Takahashi).

Wan’s never been the most technically adept or sophisticated storyteller, but his weaknesses as a filmmaker are especially apparent throughout.

The darkly funny American indie drama Small Engine Repair works best when it’s a hangout comedy starring three schlubby New England burnouts.

There’s a lot of walking and talking, but this thing never really moves fast enough, not even during its action scenes.

The canned British character study Mogul Mowgli disappoints on a few levels, especially given its admirable focus on authenticity and cultural identity in a kitchen-sink drama about Zed (Riz Ahmed), an aspiring British Pakistani rapper.

What’s really wrong with Richard is that he’s a boring monster.

Unfortunately, much of Cryptozoo feels like an earnest, flashy genre exercise that’s more eccentric than thoughtful. It looks great on paper, but not so much on a screen.

It’s hard to get lost in Cameron’s images or Joy’s workmanlike direction given how often they’re overwhelmed by her flashy dialogue.

Not Going Quietly credibly highlights the “moral stakes” of Barkan’s cause, as one of his colleague says, with a welcome mix of candor and artful consideration.

To enjoy Days, you have commit to its earthy dream logic. It is an extraordinary movie; it is not an easy sit.

The East is essentially divided into two halves, and neither is more illuminating than the other.